Over his nearly three years of obsessing over, satirizing and deftly puncturing the sport of cycling, the anonymous blogger Bike Snob has made his worldview clear. He loves to ride his bike. He wants you to ride, too. Just maybe not on those florescent wheel rims. Or pedal against traffic. Or with your helmet on the handlebars. And even if it's not fashionable, he'd like you to consider using brakes.
Such style and safety points are well known to the readers who log on daily to the Bike Snob's sharp-edged and fetishistically detailed Web site: bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com. The site established the Snob as an acerbic sports blogger, earned him a monthly column in the prominent U.S. cycling magazine Bicycling and won him admirers like seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong.
Still, there's one thing most readers don't know about the Bike Snob: his real name. While not exactly going to Bruce Wayne-levels of protection, the Bike Snob has shielded his actual identity from the public, preferring to let his pen name take the credit. He's posed for magazine and newspaper articles with his face shielded, revealing only fragments of detail about his personal life.
"Just hiding in plain sight," is how the Bike Snob put it recently over a beer at Henry Public, a gastropub in Brooklyn, N.Y.
But now the Bike Snob is ready for his close-up. With a first-ever Bike Snob book on the way—and facing the logistical problem of how to do a promotional book tour while staying anonymous—the Snob has decided to unmask himself.